Power Wars Blog by Charlie Savage

The last iteration of the Obama administration’s ambivalent “look forward not back” attitude toward the defunct Bush-era CIA torture program — banning it, but not investigating what happened — was the Obama Justice Department’s resistance to an effort to get a copy of the full, still-classified Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report about that program deposited with the judiciary for safekeeping during the Trump years. But as the Obama era came to an end, two Federal District Court judges for the District of Columbia ordered the executive branch to provide a copy of the report to the court’s security officer, and today, on the deadline set by one of them, the Trump administration complied rather than appeal.

Power Wars provides “a master class in how to think seriously about crucial aspects of the [war on terrorism]. … comprehensive, authoritative … essential and enthralling.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Already classic…there is no other work quite like it.”

—The Jerusalem Post

Power Wars explores “in intricate detail nearly every major issue in Obama’s national security policy: detainees, military commissions, torture, surveillance, secrecy, targeted killings, and war powers. Its behind-the-scenes story will likely stand as the definitive record of Obama’s approach to law and national security.”